With great fanfare, it was reported last week that the current health advice about eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day is outdated, and that scientists now believe that eight portions is more beneficial.

While many people grumbled about how on earth they would manage those extra portions, I ­allowed myself a wry smile.

For more than two years I’ve known that the ‘five-a-day’ mantra we’re all so familiar with is nothing but a fairytale. [...]

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Diet is everything. We load up on anti-oxidants to undo the damage we have done. What if we just don't do the damage in the FIRST place? Stop smoking. Stop eating highly processed food.

Now we load up on vegetables or even become vegetarian thinking we will be more healthy, but we aren't and won't be. Vegetables are not all that great. Compared to meat, they are pretty much nutritionally deficient. Eating more fruits and vegetables is all just a clever marketing campaign. It is interesting to note that the government has bought into it. Nutritional and medical information supplied by the government is at the political whims of special interest and lobbyists.

... It started as a marketing campaign dreamt up by around 20 fruit and veg ­companies and the U.S. National Cancer Institute at a meeting in California in 1991. And it’s been remarkably successful. ...

Liver is NOT recommended, since it's where the body (of all animals) store the majority of of toxins. When it was more difficult to get the nutrients one needs, and when there were less toxins in the food xhain. But now, it's not recommnded by dieticians.

And fruits and veggies are EXCELLENT sources of fiber, which helps interferes with the absorption of sugars and fats. Hence, they do have an essential place in the human diet.

Liver is NOT a repository for toxic metals and other "bad stuff". It does not store them. It is a processing plant, not really a filter. The toxic metals and other unhealthy compounds are passed to the kidneys and then eliminated. In your case, lacking functional kidneys, you probably would STILL benefit from eating a weekly serving of liver and suffer no ill effects. There just isn't that much toxin in liver or kidneys unless you are eating an animal raised in a superfund site.

Note the "Collection of Materials" under "Materials and Methods". Note the last paragraph under "Arsenic" under "Results and Discussion". Also note the last paragraphs under the headings "Cadmium", "Mercury", "Zinc", "Copper", "Lead", and "Zinc".

Semantics. The kidneys don't process/filter/eliminate heavy metals. They do out through the stool. Or so say my kidney and liver specialists. And when a liver specialist says the livers stores heavy metals until chelation forces them out, I'll believe them over any non liver specialist (oh, and nephrologists). So should any rational, thinking human being.

A quick note about natural tea (As in: actual tea from the tea plant & not herbals which do not contain tea leaves) - be careful about having it with meals. I recently learned that it can interfere with iron absorbtion.

There is some conjecture as to whether adding citrus to the tea will counteract the effects as citrus & vitamin C in general actually does help with iron absorbtion.

Certain wines are also a good source for anti-oxidants. (And may pair well with cheeses, chocolate, nuts, olives & other fruit. :-)

I need to amend my statement on herbal teas. Some of them are also not so good. It seems coffee & cocoa are not out of the clear either. :-(This article gives which ones are the worst and percentages:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10999016

Conclusion: you just engaged in ad hominem attack. Review of my previous comments questioning if you read or scanned, I cannot validate your claims of me committing an ad hominem attack.

I filled in citations in my post to validate the author from the original article. The author can be cited as the article originates from an "authoritative" media source. Media articles tend to not include footnotes, and that is what it was. The author of that article, Zoe Harcombe, is also a degreed nutritionist and published author on obesity and nutrition. I am pretty sure she knows what she is talking about. She mentions her credentials in the article, which you apparently only scanned, but did not read.